1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a method and a system for detecting pricing driven by browser settings. In particular, a method and a system are provided to identify merchants that are using browser-driven or cookie-driven price setting mechanisms, and to help shoppers obtain the lowest available price for a product or service, given the merchant's price setting mechanism.
2. Description of the Related Art
For years, the Internet, with its ease of quick comparison shopping, has granted people a certain power over retailers. At the click of a button, shoppers can search for, and in many instances find, a better deal elsewhere, no travel required.
However, the idea of an unbiased, impersonal Internet is fast giving way to an online world that, in reality, is increasingly tailored and targeted. Websites are adopting techniques to glean information about visitors to their sites, in real time, and then deliver different versions of the Web to different people. Prices change, products get swapped out, wording is modified, and there is little way for the typical website user to spot it when it happens.
It is difficult for online shoppers to know why, or even if, they are being offered different deals from other merchants. Many sites switch prices at lightning speed in response to competitors' offerings and other factors, a practice known as “dynamic pricing”. Other sites test different prices but do so without regard to the buyer's characteristics.
In today's marketplace, several retailers consistently adjust prices and display different product offers based on a range of characteristics that can be discovered about the user or customer. Such characteristics include, for example, browsing history of customers and geolocation of customers. Based on these characteristics, the retailers vary offers and products that they display to a visitor to its site.
What is worrisome to customers is that retailers are charging different prices based on an individual's characteristics or buying history. There is strong evidence that this occurs on a regular basis. And while it can be noted that such practices can be imposed offline in the brick-and-mortar environment as well, the Internet has driven such capabilities to a new level.
Thus, there is a need for a method and a system to identify merchant websites that vary prices based on an individual's characteristics or buying history (e.g., browser settings and cookies). Also, there is a need to help customers get the best price for products and services at websites of merchants that engage in such practices.